The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity

by William Wells Brown

The Old Slave-holders.—The Freedmen.—Murders.—School-teachers. —Riot at Memphis.—Mob at New Orleans.—Murder of Union Men—Riot at a Camp-meeting.

Haughty and scornful as ever; regarding themselves as overpowered, but not conquered; openly regretting their failure to establish a Southern Confederacy; backed up by President Johnson in their rebellious course,—the Southerners appear determined to reduce the blacks to a state of serfdom if they cannot have them as slaves. The new labor-laws of all the Southern States place the entire colored population as much in the hands of the whites as they were in the palmiest day of chattel slavery, if we except the buying and selling. The negro whipping-post, which the laws of war swept away, has, under Andrew Johnson’s reconstruction policy, been again re-instated throughout the South. The Freedmen’s Bureau is as powerless to-day to protect the emancipated blacks in their rights as was the Hon. Samuel Hoar to remain in South Carolina against the will of the slave-holders of the days of Calhoun and of McDuffie. Where the old masters cannot control their former slaves, they do not hesitate to shoot them down in open day, as the following will show:—

A Texas correspondent writes to “The New-York Evening Post” (he dare not allow his name and residence to be printed) as follows:—

“Every day I hear of murders of freedmen. Since five o’clock this afternoon, four new ones have been reported here. The disloyal press suppress the mention of such occurrences.

“Should there be another outbreak in Texas, very many Union men, as well as a large proportion of freedmen, would at once be massacred in order to bring about such another reign of terror as would make the South a unit....

“Three freedmen were murdered in or near the line of an adjoining county a few days ago. The wagon which one of them was driving was robbed of all the fine goods it contained. The other two freedmen were shot by the same man, who is believed to be their former owner. The head of one of them was cut off, and they were left unburied. No investigation has been, or probably will be, made into these murders. If any Union man were to move in the matter, it would be at the peril of his life.

“The brave and loyal man who told me of these murders was applied to by a freed man, a kinsman of one of the murdered, for advice. The freedman was told to go to Austin, and report the facts to the agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau: but he appears not to have arrived. Like the freedman despatched by the chief justice of Refugio County, with a letter setting forth the disorders in that county, he may have been shot on the road.

“My informant, seeing that I set about writing down the facts as to these murders just as he stated them, said to me, ‘Do not make my name public, for it is all I can do to hold my own in—————county just now;’ and added, ‘Ikeep no money in my house but a few dollars for current expenses. I can take care of myself in the daytime, but I do not feel safe at night.’”

On the 2d of April, 1866, a Mr. Quisenbery was tried at the Circuit Court for the County of Louisa, Va., for the murder of Washington Green. Green was the former slave of Quisenbery, had worked for said Quisenbery from the fall of Richmond, about the 3d of April, 1865, until about the 1st of October, 1865, when Quiserinbery told him, the said Washington Green, that he had better go and get work somewhere else; that he would not pay him for any thing that he had done. Washington Green went to work for a lady to get some shingles for her, and Quisenbery made a contract with this lady, that she should pay him, for Green’s getting the shingles, by thrashing out his, Quisenbery’s, wheat. It did not satisfy Washington Green, that Quisenbery should not only refuse to pay him for the work which he had already done for him, but that he should also collect what he had earned by hard working for this lady. Green went to Quisenbery, and asked him for the amount of getting the shingles for this lady. Quisenbery said, “Washington, this is three times that you have been after me for that money; I am now going to my hog-pen, and I warn you not to follow me.” He repeated that warning three times. He then went to the hog-pen, got over the fence, stooped down to throw out some corn that the hogs had not eaten. He looked up, and saw Washington Green at or near the fence, and said, “I thought I warned you not to follow me,” and pulled out his knife, and stabbed Green in the throat, and killed him instantly. This is the evidence and confession of Quisenbery, who was tried, and the jury found a verdict of not guilty, without scarcely leaving the jury-box; and Quisenbery was declared guiltless of any crime amid the plaudits of the people.

At Jacksonville, Fla., on the 20th of June last, a freedman complained before Col. Hart, that his last employer would not pay him. The black man afterwards went to the pine-woods, chopping logs. While absent, the man of whom he had complained got a woman to go to the freedman’s wife, and get into a difficulty with her; whereupon the freedman’s wife was arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined fifty dollars, being unable to pay which, she was put up at auction, and sold to the person who would take her for the shortest time, and pay fine and costs. The shortest time was four years! Under another law of the State, the children were bound out till they should become of age!